Christmas Day Mass December 25, 2014

We wish everyone a merry and blessed Christmas! Fr. Luis reminds us that for Catholics, this is the first day of Christmas, a season that will end in two weeks with the feast of the Epiphany. While the world begins Christmas right after Thanksgiving (and in many cases, earlier) Catholics complete the month of November which honors the deceased, and then we proceed to prepare for Christmas with the beautiful season of Advent, where we try to balance the intensity of the retail industry with meditations on the coming of Christ. The benefits of this are many, including better control of one’s budget, but most importantly, a timely and dignified procession to the Christmas season, with four weeks of sacred scripture, song and prayer helping us open our hearts and minds to the true meaning of Christmas. Citing the character of Scrooge in Dicken’s Christmas Story, Fr. Luis describes the emptiness and ultimately soul-killing process of greed and selfishness. Scrooge is a profoundly unhappy man. However, the morning of his conversion, he awakes to look out the window and views the world as beautiful. With his newly expanded heart, his day gets better as he discovers the exquisite joy of giving.
In celebrating the Christmas season with our families, Fr. Luis encourages us to try to undergo our own conversion to a higher level of spirituality and to view our lives and our families with a sense of joy and awe, overlooking the flaws and imperfections. Life is short, Fr. Luis reminds us, and like Scrooge we only make ourselves miserable through selfishness.

See the choir page for the complete recordings of Christmas Day Mass.
Again our thanks to St. Elizabeth’s Choir for their epic contributions to our parish during the month of December. In addition to inspiring Sunday mass music, the choir rocked the Parade of Lights on Dec. 6, they made our Christmas Dinner on Dec. 13th the best ever, and they visited Ila Donovan and fellow residents at Mirabel Lodge on Sunday, Dec. 21 with a festive medley of Christmas carols. We must also thank St. Elizabeth’s Guild for their tremendous effort in preparing and presenting the delicious Christmas dinner. President Francine Korn, Vice President Janis Brown led a generous crew of volunteers who made a cheery night of song and feasting for the parish. Thank you all, their names are to be found at the link above.
Fr. Luis gave a wonderful homily on the transformation of Scrooge in Dicken’s Christmas Story at Christmas Day Mass.

Thank you to Fr. Luis for another year of pastoring us and we pray 2015 will be a year of peace and joy for our parish.